Needless to say, comic book movies are everywhere. So it’s no surprise that more and more actors are taking on not just one role plucked from the pages of a comic, but two, three, four – even five. Many play superheroes and supervillains, some are secret agents or assassins, and others are just normal people put in extraordinary circumstances.
With the box office success of Deadpool, we put together a list of the best of these actors. After all, Wade Wilson is the fourth comic book character Reynolds has played (but more on that below...). The entries on our list are ranked based on a combination of the number of roles and performances, and the significance of those roles. But there are some rules: no voice work in animated projects, we’re talking live-action films and TV shows only; no comic strip characters; and no characters in movies that weren’t in comics (like Morgan Freeman, who was the comic character Lucius Fox in the Dark Knight trilogy, but his character Joe in Red was not in the graphic novel – so that’s just one comic book character for him).
Here they are, the best 20 Actors Who Have Played Multiple Comic Book Characters…
20. Josh Hartnett
2005’s Sin City was a visual masterpiece, like a comic book come to life. It was directed by the creator of the Dark Horse Comics series of the same name, Frank Miller, along with Robert Rodriguez. And Josh Hartnett starred in it as “The Man,” in his first comic book role. In the film, the character, also known as “the Colonel,” follows a somewhat different timeline than in the comic series, but he’s nonetheless a suave assassin.
Two years later, Hartnett appeared in the vampire flick 30 Days of Night, based on the acclaimed comic book series published by IDW. He played the human protagonist Eben Oleson (Eben Olemaun in the comics). Without giving too much away, he begins the film (and comic) as the sheriff of Barrow, Alaska, a town invaded by vampires, and it’s his job to fight them off.
19. Michael Caine
With a whopping 160 acting credits on IMDB dating back to 1950, it’s amazing that 82-year-old acting legend Michael Caine didn’t appear as a comic book character until 2005’s Batman Begins. He was in a movie called Gambit in 1966, but that was definitely not about the Marvel character. No, that first comic book role was the immortal Alfred, Bruce Wayne/Batman’s faithful butler. Of course, the character is more than a butler to Bruce – he’s pretty much everything to him as an orphaned child, on up to being a trusted confidant and father-figure as an adult. And Caine, with his soothing demeanor, was perfect for the part, which he played in all three films in Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy.
After he finally put away the Alfred shirt and tie, following Kingsman: The Secret Service in 2014. He played Arthur, another shirt-and-tie-wearing fellow, but wildly different from the fatherly Alfred. We can’t say too much about the character without giving away major plot points, but he is the leader of the secret Kingsmen organization.
18. Eva Mendes
As Roxanne Simpson in 2007’s Ghost Rider, Eva Mendes first hit the big screen as a comic book character. In the comics, Roxanne plays a key role in Johnny Blaze becoming the Ghost Rider, and has a bit of a penchant for magic. But the role Mendes took on paints a different backstory. Rather than growing up together and eventually becoming a couple, as they did in the comics, in the movie they meet briefly as teenagers and then reunite later in life.
Just a year later, Mendes took the role of femme fatale Sand Saref in The Spirit. The character is decidedly less sweet and well-intentioned than Roxanne. Sand is in it for the money, period. The title character’s childhood sweetheart, she has a knack for seducing rich men, having them killed, and taking their money.
17. Tommy Lee Jones
One of the older actors on this list, Tommy Lee Jones is known for playing two high-profile comic book characters – one a good guy, the other a baddie. First, the bad dude: Harvey Dent/Two-Face in Batman Forever, back in 1995. His look was over the top, with the acid-scarred side of his face looking almost cartoonishly demonic, with purple hair and a strange smile – too much like The Joker.
Second, and certainly more successfully, he has played Agent K in all three Men in Black films – the older version, that is. You’ve heard about actors playing against type? Well, this role was the opposite of that for Jones. K is a gruff, serious, by-the-books agent, and that’s exactly the type he plays in most of his movies, and the way many people perceive him in real life.
16. Rebecca Romijn
In the comic book world, Rebecca Romijn is most famous for playing the nearly nude blue baddie Mystique, which has since been taken over by Jennifer Lawrence as the younger version. Romijn first took on the shapeshifting role in the original 2000 film X-Men and reprised it in X2: X-Men United and X-Men: The Last Stand, plus an uncredited cameo in X-Men: First Class.
But in between appearances as Mystique, the model-turned-actress played Joan in 2004’s The Punisher. It was definitely a far cry from her villainous ways in those X-Men movies, though. Joan was a much more mild-mannered character who helps the vigilante hero, a real force for positivity in his otherwise vengeance-filled existence.
15. Brandon Routh
Back in 2006, many people didn’t know who Brandon Routh was when he debuted as one of the most iconic superheroes of all time in Superman Returns. He’d never had a leading role in a feature film – in fact, as far as films go, he’d only had one very minor role in one film, to go with a handful of TV appearances. What did he have going for him? He had the physique and the ideal look. He actually fairly closely resembled Christopher Reeve, who played Superman in four movies in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s. Ultimately, though, the film and his performance weren’t good enough to spawn a new franchise, and the character was rebooted with Henry Cavill in the red cape in 2013.
More recently, Routh has taken on a different DC character with much more success, playing Ray Palmer/The Atom in the DC television series Legends of Tomorrow. While he made guest appearances on the first two series, he’s a regular on Legends of Tomorrow as a hero who’s able to shrink himself to the subatomic level. In addition to that, he's also played Todd Ingram, a superpowered rock star and vegan, in comic book adaptation Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, and the title character in the little-seen Dylan Dog, an adaptation of an Italian detective comic.
14. Bruce Willis
Usually a somewhat realistic action hero, Bruce Willis first appeared as a character with superhuman powers in 2000’s Sin City: A Dame to Kill For.
In between the two Sin City flicks, Willis appeared as another comic book character in 2010’s RED, based on the WildStorm comics title. He played yet another action-heavy character, Frank Moses (changed from Paul Moses in the comic), in a film that took a comedic turn away from the comic’s more serious feel.
13. Samuel L. Jackson
Leading up to 2008’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and has voiced the character in video games. Jackson has had a profound effect on the comics version of Fury, too. In the comics, he was long known as a brown-and-white-haired white man, but they drastically changed him for the Ultimate Marvel version to look like Jackson’s take: a bald, goateed black man. The regular Marvel Universe has since retired the old Fury and replaced him with a Jackson-esque version, the old Fury’s African American son.
Around the same time Jackson strapped on Fury’s eye patch, he also took the role of Octopus in 2008’s The Spirit. As a supervillain, Octopus is on the opposite end of the hero spectrum from Fury. In the comics, Octopus was known as a master of disguise, never showing his face. We definitely see the villain’s face in the film. Also, a portion of the comic villain Dr. Cobra’s story from the comics was melded into Octopus’ story in the film.
12. Jim Carrey
One of the highest grossing comedic actors of all time, Jim Carrey has starred as either three or four comic book characters, depending on how you count. His first foray came in one of his breakout films, 1994’s The Mask. The character first appeared in Dark Horse publications in 1987. The film was a massive box office hit, following mild-mannered Stanley Ipkiss as he finds a strange mask that, when worn, transforms him into a manic, green-faced crazy person.
The following year, Carrey inhabited a comic book character again, but this time it was in a much more established world: the world of Batman. He was the obvious choice to slip into the Riddler’s slinky green costume for Batman Forever in 1995. Unfortunately, it didn’t result in an Earth-shattering performance. And, more recently, he played Colonel Stars and Stripes in 2013’s Kick-Ass 2 – and this is where the “three or four” thing comes in. This character was a combination of two characters from the Kick-Ass comic: Colonel Stars and Lieutenant Stripes. In the film, he founds the superhero group Justice Forever, helping and inspiring Kick-Ass.
11. Zoe Saldana
In 2009, Zoe Saldana burst onto the scene in two high-profile roles, in The Losers. You pretty much always want Aisha on your team, not just because she’s good, but because she could very well kill you in the blink of an eye if you’re not. She’s cold-blooded and looks out for number one.
More famously, though, Saldana starred as another assassin, the green-skinned alien Gamora in 2014’s Guardians of the Galaxy. The adopted daughter of the evil Thanos, she turns on dear old dad and, in the comics, is referred to as “the deadliest woman in the galaxy.” Saldana is currently filming the second Guardians movie and now she's playing significant roles in three major multi-picture film franchises, with her third Star Trek movie set to premiere this summer and three Avatar sequels in the works.